Background
Bopp was born in Corry, Pennsylvania but largely reared in Louisville, Kentucky, except for an impressionable year spent living with a grandfather in rural Stony Creek, New New York
artist sculptor Art and design educator
Bopp was born in Corry, Pennsylvania but largely reared in Louisville, Kentucky, except for an impressionable year spent living with a grandfather in rural Stony Creek, New New York
Deciding to become an illustrator, Bopp enrolled (with G I Bill money) at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he studied with Khosrov Ajootian and Fritz Eichenberg. He then moved on to the Yale University School of Art, where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1951 and where his artistic vision was expanded by study under Josef Albers, Alvin Eisenman, Alvin Lustig, and Willem de Kooning. He later attended New York University and earned an Master of Fine Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology in 1961.
After graduating from Louisville Male High School in 1942, he enlisted in the United States Navy and served as a hospital corpsman at a naval convalescent hospital in Asheville, North Carolina within walking distance of the Biltmore Estate, where he was "overwhelmed by the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains." Bopp had early displayed artistic as well as musical and athletic ability, and in the hospital corps he was put to work designing invitations and party decorations. Eventually he also used crafts to speed rehabilitation of convalescent servicemen. Teaching
"Having a strong sense of his Christian faith," in 1951 Bopp joined the art faculty of Bob Jones University (BJU) in Greenville, South Carolina.
Two years later, as a thirty-year-old, he was named chair of the Division, a position he held for the next 39 years.
Later chided by colleagues for investing more time in teaching than in his own work, Bopp responded that teaching was itself "a high calling, an art form with a lasting fruit."
Art
Bopp also produced sculpture. And for thirty summers, he was associated with the studio of Louis Paul Jonas.
Bopp was a versatile artist using a variety of pictorial techniques in his paintings. One critic noted the unusual amount of design in his work and praised its "master craftsmanship." Bopp himself said he thought he might have made "a carpenter instead of a painter." Bopp also emphasized spiritual symbolism with a "subtle interaction of color and the geometric construction of shape and space" that indicated the influence of Albers.
Bopp stressed "the contemplative, intellectual element in his work," in one case basing a symbolic painting reflecting Platonic universals on Escape from Reason (1968) by Francis Schaeffer.
Bopp was an active member of the South Carolina Artist"s Guild, exhibiting extensively and adjudicating competitions throughout the southeast.
Married Marian Edith Meyer, May 29, 1948. Children: Sue Ann marie, Laurie Kay, Jay Morgan.